In gorgeous sweeps of scorn.”
Pip had not spoken to Meg for over three weeks. There had been one fiery outbreak consequent upon Miss Jones’ dismissal of him. When he learnt Meg had been to her he had accused his sister of treachery, of trying to ruin his happiness; he had been willing, he said, to put off the question of marriage for a year or two, but no power on earth would have made him promise to give Mabelle up.
And she had given him up! Put him aside as if he had been a schoolboy, or a worn-out glove! And with astonishing firmness. He had even seen her already walking out with a man who sold saucepans and kettles and fire-grates in the one business street of the suburb.
[152]
]No wonder his cup of bitterness seemed running over; no wonder he felt Meg had sinned beyond forgiveness in thus interfering.
His last examination had not, it was found, been hopelessly bad, and he had been granted a “post mortem.” But even then he did not attempt to work. He used certainly, to stay in his bedroom, where his table stood with its wild confusion of books and papers, but [he would sit] hour after hour staring moodily in front of him, with never a glance at the Todhunter or Berkeley that so urgently required his attention. Or he would read poetry, lying full length on his bed,—Keats, Shelley, and Byron, tales of blighted passion and hopeless grief, till his eyes would ache with the tears his young manhood forbade to fall, tears of huge self-pity and misery.
Surely since the creation there had been no one quite so wretched, so utterly bereft of all that made life worth living! How grey and monotonous stretched out the future before him! The probable length of his life made him aghast. The sheer uselessness of living, the hollow mockery of the sunshine and laughter and birds’ songs, and the intolerable length of hours and days, seemed each day to strike him with fresh force.
After a certain time his mood induced poetic [153] ]outpourings. He thought himself just as wretched,—even more so, indeed; but the mere fact that his feelings were able to relieve themselves in this way showed the first keenness was passing.
“[HE WOULD SIT HOUR AFTER HOUR STARING MOODILY IN FRONT OF HIM.]”
Sheet after sheet of University paper was covered with wild, impassioned addresses in the shape of sonnets and odes, or, when the pen was too full for studied forms, of eloquent blank verse.